The present invention relates generally to education, and more particularly to using reviews to enrich the learning process in a computer-aided educational system and method.
Review is very important in any educational or training systems. Most of us have encountered situations where we have forgotten what we have learnt, and would appreciate some forms of review to refresh our memory. As subject matter becomes more complicated, our need for review increases, especially when we are learning an inter-disciplinary subject, or solving inter-disciplinary problems. For example, when we encounter the problem of performance degradation due to temperature increase in an integrated circuit, probably some of us would like to design a heat-sink with fins on the integrated circuit, and would like to have a review on the subject of heat-flow on a heat-sink with different types of fins.
In a typical computer-aided educational system, there is no review. Those systems assume the students remember everything they have learnt, and just keep on teaching new areas. If a student wants to review certain subject matter, she can always go back and search for it. However, most students generally do not go back; they typically proceed forward and believe that once they have learnt a subject, they will never forget. As forgetfulness and lack in understanding start to build up, not for long a typical student will be totally lost, with his interest in learning the subject significantly diminished.
There is one exception to the typical educational system; it provides students with reviews. However, those reviews are not dynamic--they are just fixed reviews, which are not personalized. Such a system provides a student a set of study-plan. After the system has presented the study-plan to the student, the system automatically provides a summary of what the student has just learnt. Such an approach is not useful. Since the student has just studied the material, the probability of the student to forget is quite low. Also, the student might understand fully what she has just studied. The system does not know, and does not care. The reviews are fixed. Under no condition would the system not present the review to the student. Such fixed reviews not catered to the needs of individual students are not very helpful to the students.
It should be obvious from the foregoing that there is still a need for a computer-aided educational system and method that is catered specifically to the needs of individual students, or the characteristics of the subject, through dynamic review so as to reinforce each student's learning in a subject.